Mooney, James E., cataloguer, Maps, Globes, Atlases and Geographies through the Year 1800.  The Eleanor Houston and Lawrence M.C Smith Cartographic Collection at the Smith Cartographic Center, University of Southern Maine. Portland: University of Southern Maine Library, 1988. ISBN-0-939561-03-4. 11 x 8½ inches, xx, 145pp., 48 plates, some in color, cloth. (96 Falmouth St., Portland, ME 04103, $60.00 plus $2.00 shipping)

The approximately 600 entries in this catalogue describe a personal collection now in the possession of the university.  Some of the entries are maps, others books.  The entries are arranged chronologically, the first non-reproduction being the 1513 edition of Ptolemy's Geography.  It is fun browsing the map entries, which range from "common" items like Speed's map of New England to much rarer items like the Zaltieri North America.  Robert Walton's America is illustrated, though misdated.  On the book side we see a 1624 issue of Smith's Generall Historie of Virginia, a 3 volume set of Ramusio, a 1548 edition of Vadianus, an unusual variant of Girault's Globe du Monde, the America of Montanus, and many others.  Oddly, the vertical dimension only is given for the maps, perhaps in order to make the descriptions more uniform with the book entries, where the height only is a common cataloging standard.  One warning about the book entries is that no collation information is given, neither a pagination nor the number of plates.  I would have preferred that the entries be numbered, since referring to page numbers is both ambiguous and more tedious.  I couldn't help noticing that the London Magazine 1755 map of Virginia was attributed to Gentleman's Magazine, though the compiler cannot be blamed here since Maps in British Periodicals was not yet available.  Though I wish collations had been given for the book entries, the book provides a useful listing of the holdings in this collection.  Serious collectors might like to see what one of their number has accomplished.  The well-planned typographical layout of each entry makes perusal easy.

David C. Jolly, 1992